Monthly Archives: June 2015

It’s been an emotional week. There were the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, then the fact that the city and the country did not burst into flames of hate and violence, but that so many, though filled with grief, were enflamed only by love and unity. Then there was Friday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court affirming that marriage between any two loving adults is legal. I am rejoicing with my LGBT brothers and sisters.

And here in southern Alberta, traditional Blackfoot territory, it’s hot. My dear body, carrying my extra weight, struggling to balance blood sugar with chronic pain, suffers. Such an experience! To be filled with so much love, and grief, while being so strained physiologically! Tears keep coming, steaming on my hot face.

I think of my dear Aunts Loretta and Esther living in hot and humid southern Illinois. They were large women, too, and when we would visit in the summer I remember their streams of sweat smudging any attempt at makeup. Oh, I shouldn’t say “sweat,” I remember: “Horses sweat. Men perspire. Women glow.” We did a lot of glowing! I remember their red faces, and the constant mopping with white cotton hankies. Who ever thought then that I’d ever be like that? They lived with segregation. I lived with the race riots of the civil rights movement. No one ever spoke about gay people. “Lesbian” was a word I’d never heard.

Things can change.

I think of the heat at Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s funeral in humid Charleston, all those people wearing formal clothing, all those sunglasses and beads of sweat. I think of the heat of muggy Washington, D.C., where at least it was appropriate to wear fewer clothes, even if there were the sunglasses and the sweat.

I, too, am enflamed: with heat, with so much love, with so much pain that so many have suffered because of racism and homophobia, with pride that humans can act with such dignity, with hope that we can make love grow, seven generations into the future.

I wanted to tell you about an amusing and serendipitous moment in my recent travels. I was in the airport, waiting interminably to be allowed to board my flight, when I noticed a man “of a certain age”, i.e., about my age, standing nearby. He had earphones on, listening, I thought, to an ipod or whatever. He was very handsome, looking fit and prosperous, and was slowly pacing around the small confines of our lineup. Suddenly I heard him say, “You are so beautiful!” and when I looked up, there he was, looking right at me!

Well, it only took a second to realize what was going on: he had been on a phone call, not just listening to a program, and he was speaking to whomever was on the phone, not to me. But suddenly he, too, realized what had happened — that I had thought he was speaking to me —- and he flashed a most delightful, apologetic, yet understanding smile. In that moment I felt him silently saying, “And yes, you too, Cat, you are so beautiful!”

We went on with our day, but both of us with a small smile in our hearts.

detail from “Why not become fire?” acrylic on canvas, (c) Cat Charissage, 2015

While we need to be as responsible as possible with our words and actions, we do not know what or where our influence might be. It can reach far farther into the wilds than we imagine.

I’m now back from my yearly pilgrimage to Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Mysterium training for helping professionals. Her teaching, as usual, was inspiring, thought provoking, and mind expanding (perhaps a little mind-blowing, too!). This year’s event was also highly emotional, because it’s the end of the five years of the Mysterium. While the topics changed each year, and many new people came each time, Dr. E. designed the five years of the training to cover a particular curriculum regarding psychoanalytic techniques and cross-cultural understandings of the psyche that is based heavily on her training to become a Jungian analyst. Although there is no degree or particular certification that has come out of this education, the knowledge base, combined with my own study, has been a huge treasure, the privilege of a lifetime.

Out of about 100 participants, there were 18 of us who had been able to attend all five years, another 20 or so attended four of the years, and another 20 or so three of the years. Although I do not particularly keep in touch with “my people” throughout the year, it’s always been a blessed reunion when I catch up with those whom I’ve studied with in previous years.

Which brings me to my deeper realization of how our individual influence reaches out in ways we do not know and cannot foresee. Person after person made comments about how something I’d said last year, or a couple of years ago, had made them reconsider some big decision in their life. Or that even though they never left any comments, they read my blog every time I posted and was so inspired by my paintings that it was a reminder that situations canchange in a person’s life, no matter our age or years of doing one thing rather than another. Another person commented on how she used the photo of one of my paintings to get her through a difficult time. I had no idea that my comments or art had had any of those effects. It was only the electrified atmosphere of the once a year deep meeting of souls that allowed me to know that at all. (Of course, we can also do incredible harm and not know it. So many of us are healing from unintentional or truly ignorant woundings. Unintended or not, the pain is still deep. That is why we need to live our lives as clearly and as lovingly as we can —- this is how we can be responsible, as far as humanly possible, that our influence is at least not harmful.)

Dr. E. unknowingly reinforced this learning for me. She exhorted each of us, repeatedly, to do our work; that if we put it out into the world it will find its audience, the “lone soul” who needs that particular encouragement or idea. Truly, we cannot measure our effectiveness when what we want to do is to encourage soul life; we cannot judge the quality of our work by the immediate or visible response to it. Our work is to do the work, to do that which we are pulled to do, and to do it in as disciplined, whole-hearted, and responsible a way as we can.

To be a freelance lover of all the world, to nurture liberty in the hearts and minds of those with whom I interact, this is my life and work. I know my intent and my effort; I will never know all the effect. We do not know what we do.

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